Where do you think we are in medtech–AI collaboration, what doors might be opening, and how does this affect the work you do?
We’re at a pivotal point where medtech and AI are converging, and it’s changing how leaders like me think about technology’s role in care. From our perspective, we’re ushering in a new era of AI in healthcare and cardiology where intelligence doesn’t just diagnose—it helps prompt appropriate action on a patient’s behalf to enable whole-person care. We live and breathe this daily, across both clinical AI and LLM-based AI, and we’re focused on bringing those together in front of our patients in ways that matter.
That means moving from insight to intervention. We’re excited about solutions where AI augments the clinician and empowers the patient, so that the “smart” part of care is not a one-off reading but an ongoing, guided experience. Every day we discover new ways to make this practical, actionable and safe, and that’s the lens through which we design our products and services.
How does Kardia 12L fit into everyday clinic and outpatient workflows, and what impact are you seeing on patient care?
First, our mission is to save lives and transform the heart-health journey so healthcare feels supportive, not daunting. We’ve pioneered AI-powered cardiac technology for over a decade—frankly, doing AI before it was cool—with multiple first-in-class solutions, ~250 peer-reviewed articles, and over 350 million ECGs recorded outside hospitals. When I joined, I set a North Star to reinvent the hospital ECG machine so it’s easier to use without compromising performance.
That led to Kardia 12L, a five-electrode device backed by our clinical AI that synthesises leads and is cleared to detect 35 conditions, including complex, life-threatening cardiac events like myocardial infarction and ischemia. We’ve expanded from patient-held devices to advanced solutions for physicians and launched Kardia 12L to address access gaps, especially in underserved and rural areas. Traditional 12-lead is expensive, cumbersome, hospital-bound and training-intensive; our pocket-sized, battery-powered device (about 0.3 pounds in weight) aims to deliver hospital-grade readings anywhere, acting like a mobile clinic.
You were working on AI “before it was cool.” What kept you committed—luck, vision, or something you saw others didn’t?
I’ve developed a pattern for spotting common themes across industries. From semiconductors to consumer electronics to Alexa, I saw how you separate services from hardware and scale across third-party devices—cars, speakers, computers, headsets. In healthcare, KardiaMobile-style sensors can be broadly used to collect data, while the cloud-based AI gets smarter over time. You start with atrial fibrillation, then sinus rhythms, then QT prolongation—the same service-hardware decoupling, applied to care.
We challenged ourselves to make hardware a user can place themselves and to port our AI determinations to that new form factor—then have the courage to seek FDA clearance. Instead of aiming for simpler arrhythmias we’d already done, we went straight at the hardest problems. It took longer, but by cracking MI and ischemia detection on a five-electrode device and earning clearance, the long tail of simpler use cases could follow. A recent peer-reviewed Heart Rhythm O2 study showed our device cut ECG acquisition time by 29%, letting physicians see more patients and act faster—this is hardware, software and AI working together.
How did the FDA respond to this new way of integrating AI, software and hardware?
We’ve had a very good partnership with the FDA. Since I joined, we’ve gone to them for well over 20 clearances, which is exactly what you want in a regulated system—performance that’s scrutinised before it reaches patients. This was new learning for us and a new lens for them, but with the right data, the right questions and back-and-forth, the outcome was clearance.
This is among the most complex things we’ve done—detecting heart attacks on a five-electrode device. Beyond the U.S., we’ve received clearances for the same system in India and Australia, and we’re leveraging the same documentation and data to expand globally. The interest spans traditional healthcare systems and “non-traditional” settings like primary care, emergency services, concierge medicine, remote districts without ECG machines, flights, cargo ships and ambulances—AI is enabling that wider reach.
You’ve raised funding and partnered with GE Healthcare. What’s the roadmap to scale across hospitals, payers and subscribers?
We’ve moved beyond being a medical-device company to becoming a patient-centric, 24/7 heart-health service provider.
Any time a person at home has a heart concern or question, we want them to think of our brand and products—and we know we must earn that trust every day. That’s why we launched KardiaCare, our patient-facing subscription service, now with more than 300,000 U.S. customers and growing in Europe and elsewhere.
KardiaCare is human-backed, digitally delivered. Patients get their ECGs interpreted by board-certified cardiologists, and new FDA-cleared AI features roll out to them first. One feature I’m most excited about is KardiaAlert: after a baseline ECG, AI compares all future ECGs to detect subtle changes a patient or doctor might miss in a snapshot. When changes occur, we alert the user and send the ECG for over-read to prompt timely care. On the enterprise side, KardiaComplete is our virtual cardiovascular center of excellence for employers and health plans—proactively managing populations to avoid unmonitored events that drive costs. Our GE Healthcare relationship ties it together: with their MUSE cardiology system across top U.S. hospitals, data from our six-lead device flows back to MUSE so physicians can continue monitoring patients after discharge.
You mentioned approvals in India and Australia. What’s the plan for international expansion?
For patient-facing devices like the single-lead and six-leadKardiaMobile, we already have clearances in 39 countries, including the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Canada. We typically begin with partners—resellers or distributors—and our international team, led by a new leader based in Milan, is expanding both our presence and breadth of offerings country by country.
For the 12-lead, we started in the U.S., then India and Australia, and we’re working with the EU for broader European approval. Over time, we build local presence and add services like virtual cardiology at affordable price points. In the U.S., we offer access to board-certified cardiologistsin all 50 states; the goal is to replicate that model globally, layering products and services market by market.
What digital health or AI trends are you watching most closely?
We’ve reached over 6.4 million patients, collect 1.2–1.3 million ECGs per week, and have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The macro pattern I’m watching is patient empowerment—people don’t want to wait for an annual check-up; they want to be partners in their care, own and move their data across systems, and act sooner.
Healthcare is conservative and slow to change, but consumer-driven, patient-driven models are evolving and can’t be ignored. Companies that organise around this—shaping viewpoints, products and services accordingly—will do well. Incumbents with decades of presence will also need to evolve. Even as a small startup, the resonance and trust we’re seeing from patients is telling.
You said 6.4 million patients have used your products. How does patient feedback shape your strategy and products?
We’re set up to receive and act on feedback. Every week, I and our heads of product and technology read reviews on Amazon.com and Kardia.com—there are tens of thousands—and we monitor them constantly. Direct-to-patient is hard because you serve one person at a time, but the quality of feedback and the speed of improvement are unmatched if you’re built to listen and execute.
We get ideas straight from customers and implement them. I receive daily emails, letters and even gifts—stories about a device helping at the right time, prompting a visit, saving a life. It’s overwhelming, humbling and incredibly motivating, and it keeps us focused on accuracy, clarity and simplicity in every release.
